Pumpkin Bread

I love to bake cookies, breads etc for my friends and family for Christmas. My neighbors get goodies and I always tuck a few into the boxes I send back to family.
While shopping at The Christmas Tree Shop recently, I found these cute little bread pans.

Aren't they precious? Notice the price tag. What a deal! Unfortunately, that price tag that thrilled me in the store had me wanting to curse today when I was washing the pans to prepare them for baking. I struggled to get those little suckers off.

Here they are ready for me to fill. Notice the mess. I never claimed to be neat in the kitchen!

 Ready to go in the oven.

I use Paula Deen's pumpkin bread recipe from her book, "The Lady and Sons"

Ingredients
3 C sugar
1 C vegetable oil
4 eggs
2 C canned pumpkin
2/3 C water
3 1/3 C all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp nutmet
1/2 to 3/4 C chopped pecans or walnuts

Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour two loaf pans. Mix sugar and oil with mixer. Add eggs and blend. Add pumpkin and blend. Add water and blend. Combine remaining ingredients and add slowly. Fill pans equally and bake for one hour or until golden brown.
Varations: For the oil, substitute 1/2 C oil and add 1/2 C applesauce. For banana bread, substitute 2 cups mashed, ripe bananas for pumpkin and omit nutmeg.

This bread is delicious and will make your house smell heavenly as it's baking. Very Christmasy!
Isn't this nice?  A gift in a gift!

                          

Otis and Me

Back in the day, before I married my Soldier and became a kept woman, I worked here .  It is a very nice apartment community. I had a fabulous office with marble floors, expensive furniture and lovely music playing all the time.
In the kitchen of the attached club room, there was an Otis Spunkmeyer cookie oven. When you walked into my office you smelled fresh baked cookies. There were yummy flavors like chocolate chip pecan, white chocolate macadamia nut, and lots of others. A few flavors I saved specifically for Christmas. One was oatmeal cranberry. These are DELICIOUS!  I absolutely love them. I would also buy the holiday specific sugar cookies with red and green M&Ms. We would make peanut butter with chocolate kisses and snicker doodles at Christmas too. I would have hot cider on the stove and hot chocolate in a carafe. It was homey and welcoming.
I have a confession. At Christmas I would order an extra case of the oatmeal cranberry cookie dough and make them for my family and friends. I cheated! I hated when someone would ask for the recipe and someone ALWAYS did. They are that good. This year, I was really missing those cookies and my sweet little neighbor girl stopped by with a fundraiser. She was selling Otis cookie dough! The heavens opened and the angels sang. I ordered the oatmeal cranberry AND a new one that is called Holiday Joy. It's a sugar cookie with pieces of peppermint candy in it. YUM!

I immediately pre-heated my oven. I HAD to make a few of these. Look at those little jewels. They are more precious than gold.

Yes, my house was smelling yummy right about now. I imagine it's what Mrs. Claus' kitchen smells like at the North Pole.

Holiday Joy. And I do mean "JOY"

Oatmeal Cranberry. Those little lovely specks are dried cranberries. So sweet and so tart. I grabbed one, poured a big ol' glass of milk and chowed down.

I only wish I had ordered more dough. It will take some self control to actually bake these and give them away. It's really why I bought them. :::sigh:::  The Christmas spirit of giving, right?

Floundering....

I'm having trouble finding myself since Nick's been home and has changed jobs. I was very involved with his battalion during the deployment as well as serving on three different boards during that year. Now there is nothing that I HAVE to do, so I'm doing absolutely nothing. It's starting to drag me down. I can only clean house, do laundry, and search the web for so many hours a day. No kids (other than the college student) means few demands in that area as well. Although she and I need to figure out where she's going to school next year and get that started.
I'm so ready for our move to Rhode Island. Could part of my problem be "short timer's disease" ?  I've heard of this. Once you know where you're going, you're ready to GO! I've been looking at houses online, communicating with the Naval housing office and am getting excited to take this next step.  Nick absolutely hates his new job now (big surprise there) and that doesn't make it any easier around here.
I need to make weekly goals for myself before I become a raving lunatic. Structure..that's the ticket! (getting back to the gym wouldn't hurt either)
On a different note, I made a fabulous dinner tonight.  I cooked the roast in the slow cooker with a mixture of 1 can Cream of Mushroom soup and 1 envelope Lipton Onion Soup Mix. It makes a kickin' gravy! About 2-3 hours before serving, I dumped chunks of potatoes and carrots in to cook in the juices.
I decided this afternoon to make some kind of bread to go along with that amazing gravy and found these: Fool-Proof Popovers  from the Food Network. They rose up and were definitely airy. Nick opened the first one up and said "Hey, there's a hole in here"  Then he proceded to fill the hole with roast and gravy and ate three of them! I guess they're a hit.
Tomorrow night is BUNCO with the spouse's club group. I will have a blast and have an errand now. I have to bring the wine!  Here's hoping for a big win so I have money to play with the neighborhood group on Friday night! Let's Roll!!

Chocolate Bliss Cookies

Since we are PCSing this summer (that's Permanent Change of Station for you non-military readers) I am cleaning out the cupboards.
I thought it would be nice to actually use the items I have stored in the kitchen rather than giving or throwing them away at the last minute.
I stocked up on baking items over the last year while Nick was gone. I found baking very therapeutic and loved having things handy if new neighbors moved in or someone was in need.
Today I was able to do away with two boxes of Baker's Semi-sweet baking chocolate squares. I used the recipe on the box to make these:

Recipe is here: Chocolate Bliss Cookies

I omit the nuts in the cookies because Nick and Callie are adament about NOT having nuts in their baked goods.

Dinner tonight was WAY simple. Salmon was already stuffed at the commissary and required only baking, rice was a box of wild mushroom rice (yummy) and roasted asparagus. Nick loves the asparagus and asks for it all the time now. I simply cut the tough ends off, spread on a baking sheet, drizzle with olive oil, salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes. I roast it at 375 for about 10 minutes and it's delicious! I especially love the bite of spice from the red pepper flakes.

Watch for me to get creative with cans/boxes of stuff in my pantry over the next few weeks. It could be disasterous!

Taco Soup

Little did I know when my good friend Susan gave me this recipe years ago that it would be a favorite at our house. Nick LOVES this soup and I love it because it's so stinkin' easy.  Serve it with cornbread (which is my preference) or on a busier day, just tortilla chips. It's DELISH!

Taco Soup

2 lbs ground beef
2 cans black beans
2 cans Pinto beans
1 package ranch dressing dry mix
1 can rotel tomatoes
1 packet of taco seasoning

Brown ground beef and season with taco seasoning. Drain fat.
Add beans, tomatoes, dry ranch dressing mix.
Serve with flour tortillias, or tortillia chips and grated cheddar cheese. (or cornbread!)

Corn Bread

1 Cup corn meal
1 Cup flour (all purpose)
1/2 tsp salt
4 tsp baking powder
1/3 Cup oil
 2 eggs
1 ½ Cup buttermilk
Combine all ingredients. Pour into baking pan. ( I use an iron skillet) Bake at 400* for 25 minutes or until brown on top.

If you want to omit the baking powder and salt, use self rising flour instead of all purpose.

This would be really good on a cold night, but since we don't have "cold" here in Hawaii, I still cook it on the "chilly" nights. 73 degrees is cold to most Hawaiians!